1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a peripheral device, a printing apparatus, a data acquisition method, a print support method, a print support system, a portable communication terminal, and a printing method that support printing data provided from a server device via a network by a portable data processing terminal.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, in a portable communication terminal such as a mobile telephone or a PHS (Personal Handyphone System) terminal, there is provided a technique for capturing character data or image data and the like provided by Web servers through Internet, thereby browsing the data by a browser. Such a portable communication terminal comprises a display device (a liquid crystal display) and its required minimal input device (key switches) because of its compactness, but does not comprise a printer.
In the meantime, a peripheral interface for connecting a peripheral device to a downstream of the terminal is provided at the above described portable communication terminal. The peripheral interface is designed on the assumption that the portable communication terminal is merely employed as a communication device (or a modem). Therefore, to the peripheral interface, a PDA (personal digital assistant), digital camera or a data processing unit such as a portable computer (a notebook type or book type computer) that do not have a communication function is connected as a peripheral device.
In this case, the portable communication terminal merely operates as a communication device, and data is transmitted and received between a data processing unit that is a peripheral device and a server on Internet. That is, the peripheral device is capable of receiving general-purpose data via the peripheral interface of the portable communication terminal. By this connection, for example, the data inputted by the data processing unit can be transmitted to a remote site via the mobile telephone through E-mail.
In contrast, if the portable communication terminal itself operates as a data processing terminal, and browses server's character data or image data over Internet, it is not possible to transmit general-purpose data excluding specific data such as memory dial data or E-mail data to a peripheral device via a peripheral interface. The memory dial used here denotes a function for registering a telephone number and a name as a telephone directory.
If a user attempts to print the character data or image data and the like browsed on the portable communication terminal, it is considered that a printer is connected to the peripheral interface, and the data is printed by the printer. A technique for connecting a printer to a peripheral interface and printing the data by the printer in this way includes: connecting a special printer used exclusively for a specific mobile telephone to the mobile telephone, and then, printing data displayed on a display portion of the mobile telephone by the special printer. The technique is used by connecting the special printer used exclusively for this mobile telephone. Thus, there has been a disadvantage that data cannot be printed unless the specific mobile telephone and the special printer are used. That is, in a general mobile telephone (model incompatible with printer connection), if the mobile telephone itself operates as a data processing terminal, general-purpose data cannot be delivered to the peripheral device via the peripheral interface. Thus, there has been a problem that the general-purpose data cannot be easily printed.
In addition, printable data is only data that can be displayed on the display portion of the mobile telephone, and moreover, the data is printed as the data is displayed, and a complicated function for displaying printable data in an arbitrary layout or format cannot be provided.
The above fact applies to a data processing terminal other than a mobile telephone, and in particular, to a simplified portable data processing terminal comprising a communication function with a network.
In addition, apart from the above described print processing, for example, with respect to music data (such as MP3) as well, even if an attempt is made to reproduce music data downloaded by the portable communication terminal by a reproduction apparatus connected to the peripheral interface, such music data cannot be delivered to the reproduction apparatus. Thus, a problem similar to the above described problem occurs.